CISA Issues Emergency Directive on Pulse Connect Secure

CISA has issued Emergency Directive (ED) 21-03, as well as Alert AA21-110A, to address the exploitation of vulnerabilities affecting Pulse Connect Secure (PCS) software. An attacker could exploit these vulnerabilities to gain persistent system access and take control of the enterprise network operating the vulnerable PCS device. These vulnerabilities are being exploited in the wild. 

Specifically, ED 21-03 directs federal departments and agencies to run the Pulse Connect Secure Integrity Tool on all instances of PCS virtual and hardware appliances to determine whether any PCS files have been maliciously modified or added.  

Although ED 21-03 applies to Federal Civilian Executive Branch departments and agencies, CISA strongly recommends state and local governments, the private sector, and others to run the Pulse Connect Secure Integrity Tool and review ED 21-03: Mitigate Pulse Connect Secure Product Vulnerabilities for additional mitigation recommendations.